This past Wednesday, students gathered in Goldwin Smith Hall to protest the horrors continuously unfolding in Gaza. I am not here to make a statement on the Israel–Palestine conflict. What I would like to discuss instead is the banner that stretched from the third floor to the ground level of the Goldwin Smith atrium, reading “MARTHA, BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS.”
As students at one of the most esteemed universities in the world, protest is not only our right; in many ways, it’s our obligation. Holding accountable those responsible for the ever-climbing death tolls in Gaza is crucial. That being said, it is equally — and if not more — crucial to ensure that those who are actually responsible for those atrocities are the ones being targeted, and President Pollack is simply not one of those people. As Cornell’s President, her responsibilities include fundraising, monitoring University budgets, and providing general supervision over affairs at Cornell. Pollack is the school’s executive, not its legislator. Her job is to execute the decisions made by the University’s 64-voting-member Board of Trustees, not to make them.
Much of the relentless criticism finding its way to President Pollack targets her lack of public, vocal condemnation of what is happening in Gaza. In December, student demonstrators occupying Day Hall chanted “Martha, Martha, you can’t hide, you’re silent on genocide.” But President Pollack has no role in foreign affairs; Her responsibilities are far more narrow. A shallow review of Conell’s Board of Trustees reveals the multitude of voices that our President is expected to reconcile. Her abstinence from public statements may not be satisfying to some members of the student body, but it’s much easier to criticize that silence from the safety of our student perspective. It’s one thing to assert that, if put in President Pollack’s shoes, we would speak our opinions freely and without hesitation, but minds quickly change when expressing those opinions places your life on the line. By speaking in defense or condemnation of either side of this conflict, President Pollack would not only be putting the safety of her life and the lives of her loved ones in jeopardy, but also the safety of our University. So, we must pause and consider before criticizing her public neutrality.
Now, let us consider the implications of finding President Pollack “guilty of genocide and apartheid.” Not only does this sentiment dump all of the blame on a woman who, in reality, is far from having any hand in the war in Gaza, but it also allows those playing a legitimate role in the “genocide and apartheid” to completely evade liability. It is not my job to redirect that blame. Cornell houses the most intelligent minds in the world, and it’s not especially difficult to determine which companies and individuals are actively backing the conflict in Gaza. It is time for the members of the Cornell community using their voices to protest the genocide occurring in Gaza to do the research and hold those truly enabling and fueling genocide accountable. By hyper-fixating on President Pollack, we are wasting our voices. The news does not blink when university students protest their president. In the eyes of the media, such behavior is no different from a child whining about their parent: It’s completely ignorable. The banner that waved through the Goldwin Smith atrium would have been far more powerful had it articulated the climbing Gaza death toll, or showed the faces of the babies who have been kidnapped, raped and murdered. Focusing on “Martha” is lazy rhetoric and an embarrassment compared to what the Cornell community is capable of.
My last argument against the trials of President Pollock is this: She is a human being. What the world and Cornell are starving for now more than ever is a sense of shared humanity. By relentlessly attacking a woman who is not even in a position to defend herself, we are eliminating any possibility of shared humanity overcoming the tensions at Cornell, let alone ailing the evils we are watching manifest in Gaza. Cheesy as it may sound, we must imagine our president as a loved one. She has done nothing to forfeit her right to compassion, yet the Cornell student body has ferociously sought redress. If for no reason other than President Pollack’s humanity, we owe it to our shared humanity to proceed with more grace than we have displayed thus far.
I will close with a pet peeve: Martha Pollack has a doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is a professor of computer science, information science and linguistics. By a Board of Trustees composed of incredibly diverse backgrounds and opinions, she was elected unanimously to serve as Cornell’s University president. Some of the Cornell community may not agree with the way that President Pollack represents our University, but that disagreement does not undercut her qualifications. She has indisputably earned her title: President Martha Pollock. Stop casually throwing around “Martha.”
Grace Elmore is a third year English major in the College of Arts & Sciences. She is involved in many avenues of the Cornell community and holds a great deal of care and respect for her fellow students. She can be reached at [email protected].
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